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Friday, November 30, 2012

Update: It was recently pointed out that the download link was broken, it should now be corrected, sorry for any issues.

I’ve gathered all my prototype DT map tiles into a Zip file, now I’ve included all the tiles I’ve made so far regardless of how well they turned out. That way you can just use the one’s you like. Everyone has different taste, and one tile may be like by some and not others.

One last request, if you take it upon yourself to modify or improve these tiles, please email a copy to the submission link on the right. I’ll post them here and of course you’ll receive credit, and your name will be added to the contributors list.

Below are the latest additions to tile set: a road, a bridge “ramp”, and a bridge. In the zip file you’ll also find a river bank tile. Now I know my bridge is much narrower than the “Victory Bridge” but I like the tactical possibilities of a narrow bridge. It could also double as a concrete dock.

Note, to get the right look, some tiles may need to be printed “flipped”. Also not all tiles may line up perfectly. Remember these are prototypes.

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Today we have part two of our three part series on Dust Tactics Weapons.

Weapon Reliability and Special Weapon Rules

By Udo77

Weapon reliability

We have talked a lot about average damage. But as someone said to me: “You still have to roll dice!” Words of wisdom. With bad luck even 10 dice might miss the broad side of a barn. But that’s very unlikely. To find out the different characteristics of weapons I calculated a lot of probability distributions, but I don’t want to bore you with unnecessary details. Instead I will give you some guidelines which weapon might be useful in a given situation.

Slow and steady

Let’s say you have to choose between a 3/1 weapon or a 1/3. We know in the long run they deal the same amount of damage. But the 3/1 is more reliable because you throw more real dice. This I call the “slow and steady” category. If you have a lot of dice chances are high that you hit at least something. With a normal attack 4 dice should result into 1 hit with a high reliability of 80%. But don’t expect that every dice is a hit, that’s very, very unlikely. Sustained attack is your best friend here as it increases your chances tremendously. Expect here that 2 dice result into 1 hit.

“Slow and steady” is best at putting away the enemy left overs. In cases there are only 2 soldiers left, or you need only some hitpoints to kill this tank prefer the more reliable weapon. Or if you’ve got the time and don’t need to take a higher risk, weapons with a lot of 1-damage-dice are a good choice.

All or nothing

On the other side there are these weapons you roll only 1 die for, and if you hit you do a lot of damage. The Panzerschreck with 1/3 belongs into this category. It’s hit or miss. Kill the enemy tank with 1 shot or get nothing. Whereas it is near impossible for a “slow and steady” weapon to realize their full potential in 1 turn, the 1 dice weapon can do it!

This is a higher risk you take. It’s the weapon of choice if you want to kill your enemy NOW. Not in two or three turns, but now. If your unlucky you roll three times and still got nothing while a “slow and steady” weapon would have put a significant dent into the enemy armor. But it is not as important to damage vehicles partially than it is to reduce a group of enemy soldiers. A damaged walker is still full functional, so it doesn’t matter as much. Just make sure to not attack with this unreliable weapon if only 1 point of damage is needed if you’ve got the choice.

AP incendiary blast (death skull weapon)

We’ve not discussed armor piercing weapons so far because you can’t determine the average damage here. AP weapons kill in one shot regardless of hit-points left. See the following table to see how likely a hit is:

Laser weapons are improved a bit if you compare them to normal weapons with the same amount of dice. Damage and reliability is a bit higher. But don’t expect any series of successful rolls that increases your output significantly. The chance to roll 3 hits in a row is measly under 4%. See it more like a bonus, don’t rely on the laser effect too much. 2 dices with laser are comparable to 3 normal dice.

Characteristics of phaser weapons

Phaser weapons are not very reliable in Dust Tactics because you have to throw the dice two times. The chance to miss with a 2/3 phaser weapon is 59%. On the other hand the chances to realize more than one third of the potential damage output is very slim. But a phaser weapon still hits from time to time, that’s the good news. As always use sustained attack if possible. The real advantage of a phaser is that it ignores cover.

Special rules

There are some special rules you have to take into consideration besides raw damage output. The most important is the special rule of ignoring cover. Close combat, flamethrowers, artillery, phasers and (most) grenade weapons ignore cover.

I won’t go into detail about cover in this article. But it’s enough to say that against hard cover a weapon that ignores cover is three times more effective than a normal weapon!

Burst or reload are also rules you have to take into account.

Sustained attack or not?

Sustained attack is almost always useful. You want to deal damage as fast, reliable and often as possible. But there are some cases in which a sustained attack is unnecessary overkill. For example if you’ve got 6 or more dice for every enemy hit-point a normal attack is more than enough. With 6 dice the chance to achieve at least one hit is 91%. Why waste one action to increase this chance to 99% if there are more important things to do?

Or let’s say you’ve got a situation where you have to move two spaces in two turns. What to do? Sustained attack, then move-move? Or would it be better to shoot-move, shoot move? In the second case with two single attacks your damage output would be indeed a bit higher (about 20%). But I would treat both possibilities as equal. In the second turn you could already have lost some troops, so there is no real advantage.

If you can use sustained attack. In the end it’s nearly as good as two single attacks.

This brings our article to an end. I hope it was helpful so that you can make the best use of your weapons of choice. Next time I will discuss soft and hard cover and if it’s useful to attack tank traps.

See you next Wednesday for part three looking at cover in Dust Tactics.

Today we have something a little different, Udo77 a fellow DT fan has been crunching the numbers. Today he has a pretty in depth analysis of the probabilities, and potentials of some of the common DT weapons.

This is part one of a three part series, coming to you here every Wednesday.

DUST TACTICS, WEAPON DAMAGE AND PROBABTILIES

by Udo77

Did you ever wonder how powerful this laser weapons really are? Or how useful this strange phaser weapons might be? And how can you compare them to other weapons?

In this Dust Tactics article we will discuss the damage output of the different kind of weapons, and how they behave differently on the battlefield. With some easy formulas you learn how to compare normal, laser and phaser weapons with each other.

I admit that the content of this article won’t revolutionize the way you already play. Experience is always better than theory. But it can give you a firmer grasp on some details, and maybe you can develop some new ideas from this. As you know: knowledge is power!

Enough of the chit chat. Regarding weapon damage I will distinguish three items:

· Average weapon damage and how you can calculate it easily

· Reliability of the damage output (I avoid the term “probability distribution”)

· Special rules like flame weapons and how they affect gameplay

As this article is about the damage I didn’t take the weapon range into consideration, and we’ll be covering it along with Reliability next week.

Average weapon damage

Now how can we compare the different kinds of weapons like machine guns, flamethrowers, lasers or phasers? I did some math and came up with the idea of “virtual dice”. If you attack with a normal weapon like a machinegun you throw X dice, and every hit does 1 damage. Now you can convert any weapon into a normal weapon like this using “virtual dice”. Weapons with the same amount of “virtual dice” can be treated as equal in this first step. You can calculate this number easily dependent on weapon type.

Number of virtual dice for a normal weapon

The combat value of a shotgun is e.g. 3/1 against soldiers with armor 2. A flamethrower does 1/4 against vehicles. To obtain the number of “virtual dice” multiply the number of real dices with the damage output per dice. The shotgun has 3*1=3 dice, the flamethrower has 1*4=4 virtual dice.

Example Standard Weapon

Number of virtual dice for a laser weapon

Laser weapons have the rule of rerolling your hits. A “Schwer Laser-Werfer” has a combat value of 1/3 against vehicles. The first step is to multiply 1*3=3 as shown above. To reflect the increased damage of laser weapons multiply your result with 1.5. So this weapon has 3*1.5=4.5 virtual dice.

Example Laser Weapon

Number of virtual dice for a phaser weapon

For phaser weapons you have to roll two times to get your result. See page 24 of the revised core rulebook on how to use this phaser weapons. A 60W phaser gun has a combat value of 2/3 (with the lightning symbol between numbers). Multiply again the first with the second number: 2*3=6. Divide this result by 3 to get your number of virtual dice. 6:3 = 2 virtual dice.

Example Phaser Weapons

What to do with these virtual dice?

At the moment we’re interested in the average damage output of a weapon. Weapons with the same amount of “virtual dice” do the same amount of average damage. Easy as that. A laser or phaser does behave differently than a machinegun in a given situation. This we will discuss this later. But it is acceptable to say for now that a 3/1 gun is as good as a 1/3 weapon, or a 2/1 laser, because they use the same number of “virtual dice”. If you’re rolling 3 dice with 1 damage each, or 1 dice with 3 damage, or 2 dice with laser rule, on average that’s the same! The following table sums up our thoughts so far in a more generic way:

With this easy calculations you can compare the different weapons and get an idea on how powerful they really are.

Actual average damage

If you want you can do the next step and determine the exact average damage. You already know your number of “virtual dice”. Now the kind of attack is important: do you use sustained attack, or do you even use a spotter or some other special case that reverses your dice result?

One dice does one third of a hit-point as damage on average. You can also say: by throwing 3 dice you can expect to do 1 hit-point. With sustained attack you can increase your damage output per dice from 0.33 to 0.56 – your attack becomes 67% more powerful! This is not as good as two separate, single attacks, but nonetheless a huge increase. It’s no secret to use sustained attack whenever possible!

With a spotter chances are even better. For example a sniper with spotter has a chance of 67% to hit, with sustained attack a 89% chance.

Now those are great odds.

Be sure to come back next Wednesday for more DT weapons theory, and a close look weapon Reliability, and how special rules effect weapons like Flamethrowers.

Special thanks to Udo77 for all his hard work developing and compiling this information for us all.

Friday, November 16, 2012

Well all good things must come to an end, and SSU Week is no different. We’ll wrap up today with a little bit of army building. This is actually one of my favorite aspects of Dust Tactics, I love the meta-game. I also feel that DT is generally balanced enough that you can make an argument for or against any unit, so no army list is really ever wrong. Sorry for the delay posting this, but I was out of the office all afternoon.

Program notes: None yet.

Saturday we’ll have a wrap up article with links to all the articles we posted this week.

Last up today we have Operation: Hades, there’s a lot in this pack but it’s mostly card board tiles, we focused on Winter Child as much as we could. Sorry for the delay on this one, but it was a little larger file than normal.

Program notes: At the time of filming the Tracked Vehicle rules had not yet been FAQ’d, for the FAQ click here: FAQ 1.6. Leave a comment if you catch an error.

Today as part of our SSU week coverage we have a nice close Battle Report with an SSU all Airborne Army vs. an Axis heavy armor infantry army.

VS.

Quick Notes: The army lists are at the end after the jump, and the Turn Counter on the roof of the center building is not terrain. All pictures are taken at the end of the turns.

The Scenario

The map is the two poster maps from Operation: Zverograd, along with three buildings, and a bunch of tank traps and ammo boxes. The goal is to be the only faction occupying the headquarters building (the one with the symbol in the center) at the end of turn eight.

(click the images for larger version)

Turn one opened as usual with no actual combat just maneuvering and deployment.

Turn two saw the Axis unlimited range weapons began to pick away at distant SSU units. While Striker swooped in and obliterated the Axis Zombies in the back street.

As turn three began Striker continued to pick away at the Axis infantry, with the Axis striking back with their Luther and Jagdgrenadiere tag teaming Nikita and taking her down. While the rest of the armor 3 Axis plinked away at any Helicopter in range with their MG-44 Zweis. But the SSU Airborne Transport would fall to combined Fliegerfaust fire from both the Heavy Kommandotrupp and the Flack Grenadiers.

In turn four after taking fire for two turns Lara and company moved to engage the Striker, and took it down easy, while the SSU force on the high roof engaged Lara and company doing a moderate amount of damage. Meanwhile the SSU Walker Transport took out a slightly damaged Hans single handedly.

Turn five saw the Axis push forward only to knocked back by Winter Child and other SSU infantry on the roof. Luther did manage to finally clear the skies of SSU airpower.

Now feeling they had the advantage the Axis really pushed forward, only to take heavy damage from the forces on the rooftop. The Kommandotrupp brought the Axis Zombies back from the dead, ironically enough.

With the initiative and the power of the Winter Child the SSU with the high ground was able to keep the Axis at bay for yet another turn, as well as take out the zombies a second time. This despite constant harassment from Luther’s unlimited range gun, that by the end of the game managed to reduce Winter Child to only one health point.

With almost no forces in range of the goal the Axis concedes the game at mid point of turn eight.

All in all this small but mobile SSU force was able to not only hold its own against what many might consider a superior Axis force, but in the end able to hold the objective and take the win.

Today we start off with what is not my favorite squad, because I prefer longer range units, but even I have to admit that, when paired with a Badass Commissar and a good hero these guys are hard to beat.

As much as I love my Ludwig, I’m even a fan of Mickey, there has always been a special place in my heart for the little KV 47s.

Program notes:

Combined Shots:

This skill is available to some vehicles with two Flamethrowers. Instead of firing separately, the vehicle can combine the two shots into one. Rather than rolling combat dice for each weapon individually, the player rolls combat dice for only one of the weapons but the range is extended one.

If you’re a long time fan of the Dust universe then you’ll know that the KV 47 has been around for a while, and even appeared in the Risk like Dust Strategy Game (2007).

(As always click to enlarge.)

I’m waiting for the ballistic missile drop pod version of the KV 47 to appear in DT, but I know it’s a long shot. The KV 47 was also one of the first 1:35 scale models available from Dust Models.

For those of you interested in a little more info on the good ol’ 47, check out the images below. These are pretty old and much like the Axis Luther some names have changed. (Originally the KV 47 B “Natasha” was known as a “Koshka" named for the hero Koshka.)

Now we look at the Operation: Zverograd expansion, with Koska and Grand'ma.

Program Notes: Here is the rules for Fighting Sprit, which I always forget to use, and forgot to explain in the video. I generally try to use sustained attacks, so this doesn’t get much use.

Fighting Sprit

A hero with this ability is an extraordinary fighter. He knows how to push his advantage and can carry on the assault relentlessly.

Once per game the hero can call upon a level of determination that few can boast.The hero treats Successes as Misses, and Misses as Successes with all of his weapons as long as the hero performed at least one MOVE action this round. In order to trigger this bonus, the hero must move before attacking.

Today is the fist day of SSU week and before we get to our fist videos let’s take a moment to learn just who is the SSU.

The Sino-Soviet Union

The Sino-Soviet Union is the third faction introduced in the Dust universe. On the map below you can see the extent of the SSU as of 1947 in the DUST universe.

A you can see the majority of the SSU is what we know as the Soviet Union, with a large portion (the Sino part) being China. Also there are many allied territories such as Cuba and many South American nations. Further expanding their territory are occupied zones in places like Alaska and Africa.

To learn a bit more about the SSU take a look an an excerpt form the SSU history books.

Every so often we like to do these sort of articles, and we felt this was a good time for this as it will hopefully answer some questions before their asked.

Today we’re going to look at the Dust Tactics Luther, and ask: just what is a Luther?

Now most of you are probably saying this is a Luther, that’s what the card says.

And I’m sure for most of you this is what you think of when another DT player mentions a Luther. But what if I told you this also was a Luther?

Now I’m sure many of you are confused, and are likely seeing what has to be a bastard child of a Loth and a Ludwig, but I assure it is an early model Luther (a Luther I)

And here is another Luther specifically a “Luther II.” Now you’re saying that’s a Ludwig, and you’d be right, but according to the Dust-Models website and a Japanese Modeling magazine this is a Luther II.

The fact that the above is a Luther II explains why this is a Jagdluther, and not a Jagdludwig.

And why this is a Konigsluther, and not a Konigsludwig.

So it seems at some point what was a Luther II became what we now call the Ludwig. But none of the other unit names were changed to align with this newly christened walker. Which has lead to some confusion when units like the Konigsluther were first released.

Well I hope you enjoyed this brief foray into the weird world that is Axis walker naming conventions. And I hope that now the Konigsluther’s name makes a little more sense to you.